Newly released body camera footage shows state Sen. Charles Schwertner’s February arrest for suspicion of drunk driving after refusing to take a breathalyzer test. Travis County prosecutors dropped the charge in July, saying there was not enough evidence to secure a conviction.

The video was released to The Texas Tribune on Friday in response to a public records request. It shows Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican, being pulled over in the early morning hours of Feb. 7 in Austin. The officer tells Schwertner he was driving between two lanes, and Schwertner apologizes, saying he and his passenger were “changing channels and stuff.”

State Rep. Claudia Ordaz, D-El Paso, can be seen in the front passenger seat with Schwertner as he is being pulled over. In a statement, she said, “I had no involvement in this matter other than being a passenger at the time of this incident and was fully cooperative with authorities at all times. I regret this incident occurred, and in the future, I will use more caution to prevent this type of unfortunate circumstance.”

The video goes on to show Schwertner repeating he had not been drinking, performing field sobriety tests and being handcuffed. He was released from the Travis County jail later that day, telling reporters he was “deeply apologetic” and “made a mistake.”

Schwertner’s lawyer, Perry Minton, declined to answer questions about the video and instead provided a brief statement.

“This is the video the Travis County Attorney’s Office viewed when it rejected any charges against Senator Schwertner months ago,” Minton said. “It’s time to move on to newsworthy stories.”

The Tribune provided the video to both Schwertner’s and Ordaz’s offices shortly after it was released on Friday evening. Minton provided his statement Saturday morning, while Ordaz did not respond with a comment until just 1 minute before this story’s publication.

In the video, Schwertner tells the officer he was picking up Ordaz at the airport and they had gone out to dinner at Whataburger. Ordaz tells the officer they are parked at her place, and Schwertner confirms it is where she lives.

The officer asks if they have been drinking and both say no. The officer asks Schwertner to come out of the car, and once he does, the officer tells Schwertner he notices a “strong smell of alcohol” on his breath. The officer asks again if Schwertner had anything to drink, and Schwertner says no.

A little while later, the officer continues to ask Schwertner whether he has been drinking, at one point asking him to rate how drunk he is on a scale of zero to 10. Part of the audio of the exchange is missing, but Schwertner’s response is audible.

“I’m sober,” Schwertner says. “Zero.”

The officer proceeds to conduct field sobriety tests on Schwertner, during which his wife apparently arrives at the scene.

“My wife just showed up,” Schwertner says, explaining he was distracted while balancing on one foot.

They try to restart the exercise, but Schwertner is still distracted.

“Belinda. Belinda,” Schwertner says. “She’s an attorney.”

While a voice can be heard offscreen, the words are inaudible. It is unclear who exactly Schwertner was referring to as an attorney. Neither Belinda Schwertner nor Ordaz are listed as attorneys in either of their public profiles.

The officer and Schwertner resume the exercise, but Schwertner becomes impatient. He asks the officer if the length of time he has been balancing is “sufficient,” and the officer tells him that is not for him to decide.

“Officer, this is getting to be a interrogation,” Schwertner says.

The officer says all he is trying to do is get Schwertner to follow instructions for a “standardized field sobriety test.” Schwertner insists he has done everything the officer has asked him to do and tells the officer he is “acting inappropriately.”

Schwertner ultimately completes the test and he and the officer walk over closer to a police car, where a second officer assures Schwertner he is going through a “standardized thing” and not getting any unique treatment. A third officer presents Schwertner with what he calls a “preliminary breath test,” explains it detects alcohol and asks if he would like to take it. Schwertner says no and is handcuffed and told he is “under arrest for driving while intoxicated.”

The video goes on for about another half hour, showing Schwertner being placed in a police car, calmly interacting with officers and arriving at the jail.

At one point, Schwertner asks the first officer if he can sit in the front of the police car. The officer says he has to put Schwertner in the back due to policy. Schwertner gets in the back of the car and sighs.

“I’ve done so much for you guys,” Schwertner says.

The officer replies that he appreciates it but he is just doing his job. Schwertner says he understands.

While Schwertner is in the car, the arresting officer is approached by another officer.

“I need to call the watch commander because that’s a senator, a Texas state senator, and they’re in the legislative session right now,” the other officer says before adding in a reassuring tone: “You do everything right. Everybody’s treated the same.”

Schwertner was booked into the Travis County jail at 2:12 a.m. and charged with driving while intoxicated. He received a personal recognizance bond and was released from jail shortly after noon that day.

“I’m deeply sorry, apologetic to my citizens and my family,” Schwertner told reporters as he left the jail. “I made a mistake.”

The officer who arrested Schwertner wrote in an affidavit for probable cause that in addition to the smell of alcohol on his breath, Schwertner had “bloodshot, glassy, watery eyes, was confused, and had slurred speech patterns.” The officer also described Schwertner’s demeanor as “polite, sleepy, cooperative.”

Travis County Attorney Delilah Garza announced July 18 that there was not enough evidence to continue with the case. She also said Schwertner “voluntarily submitted to alcohol counseling and alcohol monitoring with no violations.” Minton, Schwertner’s lawyer, said it was the “right decision based strictly on the evidence.”

After Schwertner’s arrest, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said there was “zero excuse” for drunk driving, especially “by a member of the legislature whose conduct should be held to a higher standard.” Patrick added he would withhold further comment until the “final outcome of this issue in court.” Patrick has since not commented on the situation.

Schwertner chairs the Senate Business and Commerce Committee and has served in the upper chamber since 2013. He represents Senate District 5, a Republican-friendly district that covers the north Austin suburbs and spreads east to include College Station.

Schwertner, 53, previously had a personal controversy in 2018, when he was accused of sending sexually explicit photos of his genitals to a graduate student at the University of Texas. He denied the allegations, saying that someone else sent the messages using his LinkedIn account and another privacy phone messaging app that belongs to him.

A university investigation did not clear Schwertner of wrongdoing but said it could not prove Schwertner sent the texts. Investigators said Schwertner was uncooperative.

After the allegation, Schwertner voluntarily gave up his chairmanship of the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/30/charles-schwertner-senate-dwi-video/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, announced Monday he is joining the Democratic primary to challenge U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Gutierrez made his campaign official in a nearly four-minute video that starts with him driving to Uvalde, the city in his district where a deadly school shooting took place last year. He says the massacre was about more than guns but also about how Texas leaders have neglected the state.

“I'm running against Ted Cruz because everything that we’ve seen in this state has been nothing but taking care of rich people while the poor people, the working class, get screwed over,” Gutierrez said.

The video also singles out Cruz for his 2021 trip to Cancun during the power-grid collapse in Texas, calling it “just indefensible.” And it also takes shots, briefly, at other state GOP leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Gutierrez’s entrance into the 2024 race has long been expected, and it sets up a primary matchup with U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, who announced his campaign in May.

Gutierrez has been in the Legislature since 2008, but he became more vocal than ever after the Uvalde tragedy. He spent the 2023 legislative session pushing for new gun restrictions, delivering passionate floor speeches and holding regular news conferences with families of the Uvalde victims.

“I’m a proud gun owner and believer in the Second Amendment, but after 19 children and two teachers died, the Republicans would’t even allow us an opportunity to even talk about ways to protect our kids,” Gutierrez said in the video. “It’s why we have to do something now.”

Gutierrez has faced resistance in the Republican-dominated Legislature, but he notched at least one victory in May when a House committee surprised many by advancing a bill to raise the minimum age to buy some semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. The bill did not go further.

The Uvalde gunman legally purchased two AR-style rifles shortly after turning 18 and only days before killing 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.

More recently, Gutierrez successfully amended the Senate’s latest property-tax plan to include pay bonuses for public school teachers. It is unclear if the House will go along with the plan in the current special session.

Gutierrez began in the Texas House before winning election to the Senate in 2020.

Gutierrez faces a serious opponent in Allred, who has already picked up a number of national endorsements and has raised more than $6 million. He also transferred $2.4 million from his House campaign account.

Allred’s campaign has brushed off talk of primary opponents, saying he is focused on defeating Cruz, who is seeking a third six-year term.

Another Democrat in the Legislature, Rep. Carl Sherman of DeSoto, also is considering running for Senate.

Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas since 1994. Democrat Beto O’Rourke came surprisingly close to defeating Cruz the last time the senator was on the ballot, in 2018, but the party has not been as competitive in a statewide contest since then.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/10/roland-gutierrez-election-ted-cruz/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

“Appeals court dismisses GOP megadonor’s lawsuit against Beto O’Rourke” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A state appeals court dismissed Republican megadonor Kelcy Warren’s defamation lawsuit against Beto O’Rourke, ruling Friday that statements by the 2022 Democratic nominee for governor were protected by the First Amendment.

The Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals said a district court judge in San Saba County mistakenly denied O’Rourke’s motion to dismiss in July 2022. Warren, a Dallas pipeline billionaire, had sued O’Rourke for defamation after the candidate repeatedly invoked Warren while criticizing Gov. Greg Abbott for the 2021 power-grid collapse.

“We hold that an examination of the statements and their context from the position of a reasonable person shows they are non-actionable opinions and fall within the bounds of protected speech,” a three-judge panel said in its ruling.

Friday’s ruling came seven months after oral arguments on the motion to dismiss and can be appealed to the Texas Supreme Court. Warren's lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The legal journey kicked off more than a year ago, when O’Rourke opened his campaign with intense criticism over Abbott’s handling of the grid failure amid a severe winter storm. Warren’s pipeline company made a huge profit as demand for gas spiked, and O’Rourke seized on a $1 million donation Warren later made to Abbott, arguing it was effectively a bribe to go easy on Warren’s industry after the storm.

Warren sued O’Rourke for defamation in San Saba County, where O’Rourke then filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit and separately sought a change of venue. The San Saba judge denied both motions, and O’Rourke appealed to the 3rd Court of Appeals, where all six justices are currently Democrats. The appeals court rejected O’Rourke’s move to change venue but agreed to consider the motion to dismiss.

At the oral arguments in December, O’Rourke’s lawyer argued O’Rourke’s criticism of Warren was protected by the First Amendment. Warren’s attorney argued his client, as a private citizen, was afforded greater protection from defamatory statements.

In its 30-page opinion Friday, the appeals court agreed with O'Rourke that his use of terms like “bribery” and “corruption” were “consistent with the sharp language used in political campaigns.”

The case has long outlived O’Rourke’s campaign for governor. He lost to Abbott by 11 percentage points in November and has since kept a low profile in Texas politics.

Abbott’s campaign said when Warren filed his lawsuit that it was “in no way involved.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/09/kelcy-warren-lawsuit-beto-orourke/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The Republican Party of Texas voted Saturday to censure U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, over his recent votes that split with the party.

The State Republican Executive Committee passed the censure resolution 57-5, with one member abstaining. It needed majority support to pass.

The move allows the party, which is otherwise required to remain neutral in intraparty contests, to set aside that rule for Gonzales’ next primary.

The last — and only — time the state party censured one of its own like this was in 2018, when the offender was then-state House Speaker Joe Straus. He was also a moderate from San Antonio.

Gonzales did not appear at the SREC meeting but addressed the issue after an unrelated news conference Thursday in San Antonio. He specifically defended his vote for the bipartisan gun law that passed last year after the Uvalde school shooting in his district. He said that if the vote were held again today, "I would vote twice on it if I could."

"The reality is I've taken almost 1,400 votes, and the bulk of those have been with the Republican Party," Gonzales said.

Gonzales’ campaign responded to the censure in a statement that dinged the state party.

"Today, like every day, Congressman Tony Gonzales went to work on behalf of the people of TX-23. He talked to veterans, visited with Border Patrol agents, and met constituents in a county he flipped from blue to red. The Republican Party of Texas would be wise to follow his lead and do some actual work," campaign spokesperson Evan Albertson said.

There was no public debate over the censure at the SREC's quarterly meeting Saturday in Austin. The committee went into executive session for about an hour before returning and immediately voting on the resolution.

The SREC is the 64-member governing body of the state party and includes some of its most involved activists, giving it a staunchly conservative makeup.

Gonzales has not drawn any serious primary challengers yet, but the censure could embolden those considering a run. After the censure, Gonzales got backup from the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm for House Republicans.

"Congressman Gonzales is a valued member of the House majority, and we look forward to supporting his re-election," NRCC spokesperson Delanie Bomar said in a statement.

The original censure resolution came from Medina County, which is west of San Antonio and part of Gonzales' 23rd District. It cited his support for the bipartisan gun law that passed last year, as well as his vote for a bill codifying protections for same-sex marriage. The resolution also pointed to his vote against the House rules package in January and his opposition to a border security bill being pushed by fellow Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Austin.

Gonzales was one of only 14 Republicans to vote for the gun law — and the only one from Texas. He was the only GOP vote against the rules package, and he has stood alone among Texas Republicans in forcefully criticizing Roy’s bill, saying it would effectively end asylum. Roy has denied that.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/04/tony-gonzales-censure-republican-srec/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and likely presidential candidate, rallied Houston-area Republicans on Friday with a speech that proclaimed his state as Texas’ new partner on the front lines in the battle against the political left.

With Austin buzzing about an unspoken rivalry between the country's two biggest Republican-controlled states, DeSantis paid homage to Texas’ boisterous self-image — and said Florida is gaining its own "big sense of pride" under his leadership. He said it is being noticed "all the way up to the fella in the White House," referring to his potential opponent in 2024: President Joe Biden.

"They know you don’t mess with Texas — and you don’t tread on Florida," DeSantis said. "I really believe if it hasn’t been for Texas and Florida playing the role we have in this country in recent history, our entire country would be one big woke, neo-Marxist Dumpster fire."

DeSantis' remarks at the annual Harris County Lincoln Reagan Dinner were part of a two-day swing through Texas that will also include a similar event Saturday for the Dallas County GOP. The events come as DeSantis increasingly travels outside Florida in advance of an anticipated bid against former President Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.

Texas' own governor, Greg Abbott, has not ruled out his own White House bid, fueling the notion of a budding competition between the two megastates.

DeSantis hardly mentioned Abbott, but his speech was filled with flattering references to Texas and its recent efforts to lead the way nationally on conservative policy. It was a far cry from the tone adopted by Abbott’s intraparty critics, who see DeSantis as a stronger fighter for their causes.

Instead, DeSantis spoke multiple times about the two states as new equals in a culture war, invoking the Alamo as he promised to "never, ever surrender to the woke mob."

"The state of Florida — and the state of Texas — is where woke goes to die," DeSantis said, refashioning a line from his January inaugural address to include the Lone Star State.

Still, DeSantis was not afraid to trumpet Florida — and himself. He said he made his state a "refuge of sanity" during the COVID-19 pandemic, spurning federal pressure to keep the state shut down and perhaps, he added, showing "our own form of Texas swagger." And referring to more recent events, he bragged that Florida was the only state brave enough to publicly oppose the draft curriculum of a new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies.

DeSantis also boasted about his two gubernatorial elections. He said that even though he won with only 50% of the vote in 2018, he “earned 100% of the executive power, and I intend to use it to advance our agenda, to stand up for the people I represent and make good on my campaign promises.”

"I am just not going to be a potted plant and let the left determine the shape of the debate, let the media shape the debate," DeSantis said. "I'm going on offense."

That approach, DeSantis said, led to his blowout reelection win last year, declaring the Florida Democratic Party "dead" as a result.

The Houston dinner was closed to the media, keeping with DeSantis' hostility toward traditional journalists. But at least one attendee broadcast DeSantis' speech live on Facebook, and The Texas Tribune separately obtained an audio recording of it. The Dallas event will also be closed to the media.

In Dallas, DeSantis also will appear at a yearly fundraising dinner for the county party, but it will be a different format than the speech he gave in Houston. It has been billed as a "fireside chat" between DeSantis and his wife, Casey DeSantis, who is one of his closest political advisers.

Proceeds from the fundraising dinners benefit the county parties, but they also give DeSantis a large audience with activists and donors in two cities that are home to some of the party’s biggest contributors nationwide. DeSantis was expected to privately meet with donors on the sidelines of both Texas events.

During his speech in Houston, DeSantis mentioned one top donor to Texas Republicans by name — Dick Weekley — saying Florida was working to catch up to Texas on Weekley's longtime cause, tort reform.

DeSantis was introduced in Houston by state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, chairman of the Senate Education Committee. Creighton traveled to Tallahassee in December to meet with DeSantis about education issues.

Creighton lavished praise on DeSantis but also emphasized what the Texas Senate is prioritizing this session. He nodded to one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's priorities, saying Texas "will stand against the teaching of critical race theory by woke tenured professors."

Creighton was most emphatic about a priority of both Patrick and Abbott: a "school choice" program that would redirect tax revenue to let parents take their kids out of public schools.

"This Texas legislative session, we will make clear that Texas parents have the rights they deserve in the public school classroom and with alternative education opportunities and with tax dollars that belong to families, not the government," Creighton said.

Florida already has a suite of school-choice programs, and in his speech, DeSantis wished Texas luck in "bringing a big school-choice package across the finish line."

The lineups for both the Houston and Dallas events also included U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Austin, a sign of his higher profile statewide since he served as a key negotiator for conservatives on Kevin McCarthy’s ascension to House speaker in January.

Abbott was not expected to attend DeSantis' appearances. He was in San Antonio on Friday and set to appear in Austin on Saturday to address a conservative legal group at the University of Texas.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/04/ron-desantis-houston-speech-woke/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, is digging in as he faces a potential censure by the Republican Party of Texas over his recent positions breaking with the party.

The party’s executive committee is set to hold a quarterly meeting Saturday where it will consider a censure resolution that cites a few of the notable ways in which Gonzales has split from his party in recent months. Those include his rejection of a border security proposal by his fellow Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, and his support of a bill defending same-sex marriage protections and a bipartisan gun law that passed in response to the Uvalde school shooting in his district.

“What censure?” Gonzales said when asked about it by reporters Thursday in San Antonio. “Has a censure taken place? I think they’re gonna vote on it Saturday, and we’ll see how that goes.”

Gonzales added — as he has before — that he has no regrets about supporting the gun safety law, which expanded background checks, among other things. He was the only House Republican from Texas to support the measure — and one of only 14 nationwide.

“If the vote was today,” Gonzales said, “I would vote twice on it if I could.”

Gonzales does not plan to attend the meeting Saturday. He noted he is leading a congressional delegation to the Mexican border in Eagle Pass — as well as Uvalde — on Monday. And he sought Thursday to shift the spotlight to issues on which Republicans are more unified, attending a news conference to oppose a San Antonio ballot proposition that would decriminalize abortion.

The movement to censure Gonzales is the latest twist in his short but action-packed political career. It began in 2020 when he won a primary runoff that went to a recount and then beat the odds to keep the 23rd District under GOP control. Then redistricting made the seat redder for the 2022 election, and he had to navigate a unique race that served as a referendum on his independent streak. He won by double digits.

But the intraparty sniping has not subsided, especially as Gonzales has vocally opposed the border security bill from Roy, which would give the secretary of Homeland Security the power to bar border crossings and detain asylum-seekers while their cases are processed in court.

The censure resolution that the State Republican Executive Committee is set to consider originated from Medina County, which passed it last month and requested the state party take it up. Fifteen other counties in Gonzales’ sprawling district have since approved concurring resolutions.

Three-fifths of the 64-member State Republican Executive Committee would have to approve the resolution Saturday. If the resolution passes, it would allow the state party to get involved in Gonzales’ primary, including by spending its funds to inform voters of the censure. The party is normally required to remain neutral in intraparty contests.

The state party said it believes that the only other time it approved a censure under this method was against former state House Speaker Joe Straus in 2018. He was also a moderate from San Antonio.

The Medina County resolution alleges Gonzales violated the principles of the party by voting for the gun law and opposing Roy’s border legislation. It also cites Gonzales’ vote last year for a bill to codify same-sex marriage, plus his lonely vote against the U.S. House rules package in January, which made it easier to remove the speaker and made it hearder to raise taxes, among other things.

Gonzales scoffed Thursday at his opposition to the rules package, which was the product of painstaking negotiations with House conservatives to allow Kevin McCarthy to become speaker. Gonzales questioned a reporter on whether he understood the rules package, dismissing it as “so inside baseball.”

“The reality is I’ve taken almost 1,400 votes, and the bulk of those have been with the Republican Party,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales defended his support for the same-sex marriage bill last year, telling The Texas Tribune that it “wasn’t a tough vote” and that Republicans need to accept same-sex marriage if the party wants to grow.

The Roy border bill has been the biggest flashpoint recently. Gonzales has stood firm against it, arguing it would effectively end asylum. Roy has denied that.

That has led to a budding rivalry between Gonzales and Roy, complete with thinly veiled threats from allied groups to field a primary challenger against Gonzales.

Gonzales took a fresh swipe at Roy on Thursday while touting how he has voted with the GOP most of the time. A day earlier, Roy was one of only four Republicans to oppose a bill to require estimates of the inflationary impact of President Joe Biden’s executive orders. Roy said he objected to the proposal because it did not apply to “‘emergency’ orders that are some of the primary drivers of inflation.”

“Just yesterday, I voted to hold Biden accountable for inflation,” Gonzales said. “Not all Republicans voted in favor of ensuring that.”

That the opposition to Gonzales would originate in Medina County is unsurprising. The county, which is west of San Antonio, is home to Raul Reyes, Gonzales’ 2020 primary runoff opponent, who remains a bitter critic.

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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s pugnacious leadership style was on display this month as he took public aim at two fellow Republicans who crossed him, sending an early message in this year’s legislative session that anyone — friend or foe — who gets in his way will face his wrath.

State Rep. Steve Toth, a fellow conservative from The Woodlands, learned that lesson earlier this month when Patrick unleashed a spirited attack against him in the form of multiple press releases from his campaign that were sent to news organizations and posted on social media. Patrick criticized Toth over comments he reportedly made suggesting the Senate shared blame for the Legislature’s failure to pass a bill that would have banned gender-transitioning medical care and surgery for children. Patrick denounced Toth as a “fraud” who was using misdirection and revisionist history to cast blame on the Senate, which Patrick presides over.

A few days later, Patrick ratcheted up an older feud when he took to Twitter and essentially demanded that several companies and organizations drop former state Rep. Chris Paddie as their lobbyist. Patrick has had a vendetta against the Marshall Republican since 2021, when the Senate clashed with the House over the policy response to the power grid failure. At the time, Paddie chaired the powerful House State Affairs Committee, which was a major clearinghouse for grid reforms.

The conflicts with Toth and Paddie highlight an aggressive start to the session by Patrick, who begins his third term overseeing a state Senate in which the GOP majority is more in lockstep with him than ever.

“This is the pugilist Patrick on full display,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, adding that Patrick is “at the apex of his power right now” and pressing his influence. “He runs the Senate as effectively and without fear as any lieutenant governor since Bob Bullock,” the formidable Democratic lieutenant governor who served in the 1990s. “This to me is something that he wants to complete across the rotunda.”

Patrick, who has presided over the Senate for eight years, has used his power as lieutenant governor to push Texas politics in a more socially conservative direction.

[Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Trump’s man in Texas, has quietly amassed influence — to the detriment of fellow Republicans]

Easily the most outspoken of the Big Three state officials — the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker — Patrick has made no qualms in the past about bending arms or using public pressure to get other state officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, to go along with his plans. In the past, he has stripped Republican senators of leadership positions for refusing to go along with his priorities, contributing to an environment where he wields tremendous control of legislation passing the Senate and rarely faces dissent.

But much of his wrath has been focused on members of the House, the lower chamber which Patrick views as insufficiently conservative and which has sometimes thwarted his priorities.

His recent feud with Toth is striking in that they are two sides of the same ideological coin. Toth is one of the most socially conservative lawmakers in the Legislature, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and a usual favorite of grassroots conservatives. He has filed two bills this session to ban transition-related care for children.

Toth, in an interview, was not keen on being on Patrick’s bad side and insisted it was all a misunderstanding.

“He’s a freaking rock star,” Toth said of Patrick. “Who’s a bigger supporter of him than me in the House?”

The issue started when Texas Scorecard, a conservative website, published an article that said Toth blamed the Senate for “killing” such legislation, which is a major priority for the Republican Party of Texas. The website said Toth had made those comments in a private meeting that was secretly recorded.

“It came over from the Senate ridiculously late, and they knew that we were going to have trouble,” Toth said. “There’s plenty of blame that needs to be spread around in this thing.”

One day later, Patrick’s campaign issued a news release pushing back against Toth’s “irrational accusations.” The release went into lengthy detail about when the Senate pushed out legislation to ban transition-related care for children and how the House bills on the same issue stalled in the lower chamber.

“Rep. Toth has a reputation for blaming others to cover up his own shortcomings on getting his bills passed,” Patrick said in a statement. “Rep. Toth’s baseless allegations and misplaced blame have cost him any shred of credibility.”

Toth has said his comments were taken out of context. He said he was explaining the difficulties lawmakers face when going through the legislative process and did not blame the Senate or Patrick for the bill’s death. Toth said the conservative website was trying to drive a wedge between conservative lawmakers who were naturally aligned.

In the recording, Toth said the Big Three leaders could have put more muscle behind the issue and he criticized Abbott for not putting the issue on the agenda during three special sessions he called in 2021. Toth also criticized Patrick for not asking for the issue to be taken up during the special sessions.

“None of them wanted it,” Toth said on the recording.

Toth’s explanation has not appeased Patrick, who issued another news release calling Toth a fraud. Patrick has not responded to Toth’s request for a meeting to clear the air.

On Thursday, Patrick again attacked Toth in a statement to The Texas Tribune saying Toth’s words had not been taken out of context and had misled the group he was talking to about the Senate’s intent.

“He continues to ignore the truth and has not publicly apologized for blaming the Senate. He knows we wanted to pass that legislation to the Governor’s desk,” Patrick said.

A grudge becomes more personal

Patrick’s beef with Paddie dates back to 2021, when Paddie was a key player in the policy response to the grid failure as chair of the House State Affairs Committee. Patrick went all out to try to reverse billions of dollars in charges for wholesale electricity during the winter storm that caused the disaster, but the House resisted the idea, known as repricing, favoring a more deliberative approach. Along the way, Patrick accused House leadership, which included Paddie, of siding with “big business” over average Texans.

Patrick never got his way on repricing, a rare high-profile loss for the all-powerful Senate leader.

But Patrick’s grudge against Paddie only became more personal. In a statement later that year, Patrick accused Paddie of misleading state utility regulators about the intent of a bill to help power companies who had to swallow massive prices from gas suppliers during the grid crisis. Patrick said Paddie had been “disingenuous throughout the legislative process and after.” He also publicly speculated that Paddie, who had since announced he would not run for reelection, was preparing to take a “highly compensated position in the same electric industry that stands to benefit from his position” on the bill.

Paddie indeed went on to become a lobbyist for the electricity industry, signing clients such as Vistra, the Irving-based energy company, after finding a way around an ethics law that had previously ensnared him. When that became known late last year, Patrick reupped his criticism of Paddie, saying in a tweet that “Vistra leadership & shareholders should know he’s lost his credibility & not welcome in my office.”

In his latest tweet this week, Patrick tagged six of Paddie’s lobby clients and said he hopes they “know he has no credibility & not welcome in my office for his disingenuous & unprofessional conduct last session on the grid.”

Paddie declined to comment on Patrick’s latest attack. So did Vistra, the company whose hiring of Paddie seems to have angered Patrick the most.

As of Thursday, records with the Texas Ethics Commission showed Paddie was still registered to lobby for all the clients that Patrick had singled out.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/27/texas-dan-patrick-senate-legislature-steve-toth-chris-paddie/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Once a political force of nature with Texas Republicans, former President Donald Trump’s influence appears to be waning in the state as he mounts a 2024 presidential campaign and the state’s legislative session gets underway.

About two months into his comeback bid, few prominent Texas Republicans have endorsed Trump — and some are showing more willingness to cross him publicly. His recent blaming of abortion restrictions for Republicans’ midterm election losses sparked disagreement across the Texas GOP spectrum, and state Republicans have disregarded his preferences as they navigated the races for U.S. House speaker and Republican National Committee chair.

The developments are a notable shift from the last several years in Texas, where Trump has had a deep pool of loyal political allies. State Republicans went all-out to praise his presidency, and they enthusiastically courted his endorsement in their own campaigns. If any disagreed with him, they mostly kept it to themselves, fearful of retaliation from primary voters — or Trump himself.

Trump, the only president to be impeached twice, picked up little support in Texas beyond the usual suspects after he announced his reelection bid for the White House in mid-November. He got the endorsements of two predictable loyalists: Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who had already endorsed Trump for a comeback campaign about a year ago, and Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom Trump has teased as a potential U.S. attorney general if he wins the White House again.

Gov. Greg Abbott has been silent on the former president’s candidacy. Abbott, a potential 2024 candidate himself, got Trump’s endorsement in his primary last year but kept his distance during the general election, skipping an October rally in Texas.

Meanwhile, Trump’s two-time campaign chair in Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, has signaled support for Trump’s comeback bid but stopped short of a full-throated endorsement.

Notably, a large majority of the Texas Republicans in the 118th Congress — 20 out of 25 — got Trump’s endorsement in the 2022 election. Of those members, only three have returned the favor and backed Trump for 2024: freshman U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston, Rep. Troy Nehls of Richmond and Rep. Ronny Jackson of Amarillo, Trump’s former White House doctor. Texas’ U.S. senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, have signaled openness to supporting someone beside Trump, and Cornyn has said he would like to “see some new blood.”

Heading into the legislative session, state House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, has become notably outspoken against Trump after staying out of the fray since he took over the gavel in 2021. After Trump’s candidate Herschel Walker lost the U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia last month, Phelan tweeted that “having the best candidate actually matters” and retweeted other users making the same point. Then, on New Year’s Day, after Trump made a social media post saying it was the “abortion issue,” not Trump, that caused Republicans to underwhelm in the midterms, Phelan responded with his most direct criticism to date.

“GOP has lost control of the Senate THREE cycles in a row & it was not the fault of the pro-life movement,” Phelan tweeted, addressing Trump. “It was your hand picked candidates who underperformed & lost ‘bigly’. May 2023-24 bring the GOP new leadership PROUD to protect the unborn.”

Phelan has faced little backlash inside his party for speaking out. To the contrary, more state House Republicans have taken his side, sharing his posts in displays of support and agreement.

“New leadership is necessary to restore the GOP to civility—and will be essential in preventing handing the White House back to the Ds (as Mr. Trump did last time),” state Rep. Justin Holland, R-Rockwall, said in a tweet. “I'm proud of Speaker Phelan speaking up and wish the rest of GOP state Speakers and Legislators would follow suit.”

Phelan’s team declined to comment beyond his recent tweets. A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Phelan was not the only prominent Texas Republican to object to Trump’s message about the midterms. Matt Rinaldi, the Texas GOP chair who hails from a further-right wing of the party than Phelan, also sent out a tweet disapproving of Trump’s take. Rinaldi argued Republicans did well in states like Texas that “effectively ended abortion” after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. “Dobbs wasn’t the problem,” Rinaldi said.

Trump has endured a number of setbacks within his own party. After taking heat for the GOP’s lackluster performance in November, a U.S. House select committee referred him for criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice for his role instigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. In December, Trump called for rules, including “those found in the Constitution” to be terminated in order to rehash the 2020 election. That post led to recriminations from Republicans across Capitol Hill, including from Cornyn, who called it “irresponsible.”

Polling suggests Trump remains popular with Texas Republicans — but not as much as he once was. He registered a 75% favorability rating among GOP voters in a December poll from the University of Texas at Austin, down from 82% in October and 85% in February 2021 after he left office.

More interesting has been the drop in intensity of GOP support for Trump, according to the same poll. The percentage of Republican voters who said they had a “very favorable” opinion of Trump was 39% in December; it was 50% in October and 58% in February 2021.

Chris Sacia is a conservative pollster who has been tracking Texas primary voters’ 2024 preferences every month. He noted that before the November election, Trump was averaging a 22-percentage-point lead, but in his latest poll, his advantage was down to 1 point, virtually tied with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“While President Trump’s direct support has noticeably declined, it’s clear that primary voters are not interested in transitioning back to the pre-Trump GOP,” Sacia said in a statement.

Indeed, DeSantis has supplanted Trump as a kind of a new North Star among Texas conservatives, and the next legislative session could feature several proposals that mimic new Florida laws. Patrick has already said he wants the Legislature to pass a version of Florida’s law prohibiting classroom discussion on sexual orientation and gender identity, which critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Patrick and Trump have long enjoyed a close relationship, and it came on most vivid display in 2021. Patrick leveraged his friendship with Trump to bash Phelan and build pressure on the Texas House to pass an election audit. He also convinced Trump to make a host of primary endorsements that have allowed Patrick to enter the 2023 legislative session, which started Tuesday, with his most loyal Republican caucus yet.

Yet Patrick responded to Trump’s 2024 launch with a four-sentence Facebook post that praised his announcement speech but did not make a clear endorsement. Trump’s campaign sent emails to reporters afterward flagging Miller’s and Paxton’s statements as endorsements; there was no such email on Patrick’s statement.

Patrick aides did not respond to a request for comment on whether he was endorsing Trump for 2024.

Patrick gave an awkward answer when asked about his Trump support in a podcast interview posted Sunday.

“If he’s running 2024 — I say ‘if he’s running’ — he’s announced he’s running, so I assume he’s running. I have not talked to him since he announced, but we do talk, have talked often,” Patrick said. “If he’s running, I’ll be there supporting him. I think he’ll win the primary, but that’s how we sit here today in January. Who knows what’s ahead.”

In the fight over the U.S. House speakership, three Texas Republicans helped block Kevin McCarthy’s candidacy for days despite Trump’s support of McCarthy, which Trump reiterated emphatically amid the chaos. The three Texas Republicans — Reps. Michael Cloud, Chip Roy and Keith Self — all hail from solidly red districts where opposing Trump could be a vulnerability in a primary, but they seemed unfazed.

While McCarthy credited Trump with helping close the deal on his speakership late Friday night, the Texas trio had already come off the fence hours earlier after they believed they had extracted enough concessions from McCarthy.

There is no love lost between Roy and Trump — they clashed in a previous House leadership election, and Trump declined to endorse Roy for reelection last year despite backing virtually every other GOP member of the Texas delegation. But it was a more consequential decision for Cloud and Self, an incoming freshman who ran as a more pro-Trump Republican than the incumbent he challenged. Trump endorsed Cloud in his 2022 primary as he was drawing a growing group of challengers; Trump endorsed Self after he emerged as the GOP nominee in his district.

Trump’s backing of McCarthy drew open criticism from Michael Quinn Sullivan, the far-right ringleader in Texas politics.

“Why is Donald Trump sticking with this massive loser / swamp-thing?” Sullivan tweeted after McCarthy lost another round of speaker balloting last week.

Texas Republicans’ indifference to Trump has also surfaced in the race for chair of the Republican National Committee. In December, the State Republican Executive Committee unanimously passed a resolution expressing no confidence in Ronna McDaniel, the current RNC chair, who has been a Trump loyalist.

Neither the resolution — nor the SREC’s short discussion of it — made any mention of the former president. Trump has since weighed in on the race, saying he likes both McDaniel and one of her challengers, Harmeet Dhillon.

When it comes to Texas donors, Trump could also be losing steam. Roy Bailey, the Dallas business owner who helped lead Trump’s joint fundraising operation with the RNC, told The Dallas Morning News last month that many contributors are waiting to see if DeSantis enters the 2024 presidential primary.

“There’s no denying that Ron DeSantis’ political star is on the rise, and that’s why you have a primary process,” U.S. Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Sherman, said in a TV interview last month. “I’m looking forward to that process, and I think the two heavyweights right now are Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.”

But who is Fallon supporting? “It’s too early to tell right now,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/11/donald-trump-texas-endorsements/.

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An unprecedented pandemic that shut down the state economy and killed thousands of Texans. A power-grid failure that left millions freezing in the dark. The deadliest school shooting in the state’s history. The end of a 50-year constitutional right to get an abortion. A restless right flank. And then Beto O’Rourke.

Gov. Greg Abbott is emerging from the most tumultuous two years of his governorship with a decisive reelection victory in hand. His election was among the brightest spots for Republicans nationwide on election night, as the party underperformed expectations of a “red wave.”

After defeating O’Rourke — Texas’ most promising Democrat in recent history — Abbott begins his third term in a strong position, with a rising national profile and a governing mandate in the eyes of fellow Republicans.

Still, Abbott faces high expectations for the next legislative session, unsettled pressures from inside his party and questions about his own political future. Not to mention he is still dealing with the ongoing — and politically fraught — responses to major events of the past couple of years, like the Uvalde massacre that left 19 school children dead.

“He clearly won by double digits,” said state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, referring to Abbott’s 11-point margin over O’Rourke. “I think the people of Texas have spoken and believe in his agenda, and so if you want to call that a mandate, I believe it is.”

Yet this is not the same Greg Abbott who won reelection with ease in 2018. The last two years saw Abbott’s once-impressive approval rating hit its lowest point ever and then recover partially, with the latest University of Texas polling showing a narrowly positive net rating.

It is against that backdrop that Abbott approaches his third term with perceived ambitions for a bigger spotlight. He has shown no signs of slowing down his at times unprecedented efforts to secure the border, and he continues to keep open the possibility he could run for president.

Democrats say the election should have been humbling for Abbott. While he won, they note he had to spend massively to defeat a challenger in O’Rourke, who argued Abbott had become too extreme.

"Governor Abbott's only mandate now is to govern with a steady, bipartisan hand and address issues that actually impact Texans’ everyday lives — not to sprint further down the rabbit hole of culture war extremism that the ever-shrinking far-right base wants him to,” the Texas Democratic Party’s executive director, Jamarr Brown, said in a statement.

Abbott’s campaign did not respond to a request for an interview or comment for this story.

The governor steered the state further to the right over the past two years than he has in his entire tenure. And as he faced controversy after controversy along the way, he made some risky bets — that the power grid would not fail again, for example. And while O’Rourke attacked Abbott as too extreme on abortion and guns — with polls showing voters agreed — Abbott remained intractable, refusing to consider any measures to restrict firearm access or rethink the state’s abortion ban.

Instead, he kept his messaging laser-focused on border security and the economy. Even O’Rourke’s aides admitted afterward that Abbott did a good job keeping the focus on issues that favored him.

Abbott’s campaign did not meet expectations on all fronts, however, with exit polling showing that he failed to achieve his goal of winning a majority with Hispanic voters statewide.

Campaign promises and the next session

Abbott made some specific promises in his campaign that set the stage for the next legislative session, which starts Jan. 10. Chief among them was setting aside at least half of the state’s $27 billion budget surplus for property tax relief, which Abbott pitched as the “largest property tax cut in the history of the state.”

He also emphasized giving parents more of a say in their kids’ education. Most notably, he declared that state funding should follow students regardless of what kind of school they attend, a statement that was a boon to supporters of school vouchers.

“He’s been very clear and very bold in what he expects or what he wants to see done, and I think voters responded to that, and so I think we are ... very hopeful that we see some movement on both of those items,” said Greg Sindelar, CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Austin-based conservative think tank.

Abbott is also poised to continue prioritizing border security in the next session. That could mean maintaining — or expanding — Operation Lone Star, the $4 billion program that at its height deployed nearly 10,000 Texas National Guard troops to the border or other parts of the state to curb migrant crossings. Abbott also initiated a state-funded border wall and grabbed national headlines by sending thousands of migrants by bus to cities run by Democrats.

While Abbott has taken unprecedented action on the border, he continues to elicit griping from some fellow Republicans that he is not doing enough. That was on full display this week, as Abbott reiterated the action he took this summer to treat the situation as an “invasion” under the U.S. Constitution and authorize state authorities to return apprehended migrants to the border. Just like when Abbott announced the move in July, some in his own party said this week it was insufficient because he was not letting state authorities send the migrants back across the border to Mexico.

Abbott did catch a break with Republican Kari Lake’s loss in the Arizona governor’s race. Lake had vowed to fortify the border more aggressively than Texas, and Abbott’s conservative critics, some of whom openly campaigned for Lake, were prepared to pit Abbott against her.

Abbott will also face intraparty pressure over the Texas GOP’s legislative priorities, which include some common ground but also some causes that Abbott has been more reluctant to embrace. Among them: banning “gender modification of children,” or medical treatments for transgender kids. That pressure has intensified on Abbott since Florida recently passed such a ban.

“After double-digit Republican victories in every statewide race, Gov. Abbott returns with a governing mandate,” Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi said in a statement, mentioning Abbott’s promises on property taxes and school choice. “Now Republicans need to deliver.”

Burrows, who chairs the agenda-setting House Calendars Committee, said he expects Republicans to be unified on the “big issues,” like property taxes and parental rights.

Unresolved issues

Abbott’s reelection race was animated by a host of calamitous events Texas has endured since early 2020. Just because he won does not mean the fallout from those events is over.

In Uvalde, questions persist about the widely panned law enforcement response to the May shooting, where police took more than an hour to take down the shooter. Throughout the campaign, Abbott leaned heavily on the fact that special committees were crafting legislative recommendations related to the shooting — recommendations that are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Another question is the fate of Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety whose agency has been among those faulted in the Uvalde shooting response. Abbott has not given any indication publicly that he has lost faith in McCraw, but the stalwart Abbott ally has faced calls for resignation in the Uvalde shooting aftermath. He has also been through an exhausting two years as the top agency head overseeing Abbott’s border-security initiatives.

The Democratic state senator who represents Uvalde, Roland Gutierrez, has repeatedly said Abbott should ask McCraw to step down. Abbott unsuccessfully sought to defeat Gutierrez in the Nov. 8 election, endorsing his opponent and tapping his own campaign funds to run attack ads against Gutierrez on TV. But Gutierrez won by a comfortable margin in his Democratic-leaning district, and he has vowed to keep up the pressure on Abbott and McCraw.

On the power grid, Abbott famously declared that everything that needed to be done to fix the grid was done in the 2021 regular legislative session. But one fellow state leader — Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — has consistently signaled disagreement, including throughout his reelection campaign.

In TV ads and on the campaign trail, Patrick bragged about successfully pushing for the resignation of Abbott’s appointees who oversaw the grid. One of Patrick’s final TV ads promised that he would “continue to strengthen our grid.”

And the on abortion — arguably the No. 1 issue for Democrats in the election — some Republicans in the Legislature have expressed support for adding rape or incest exceptions to the state’s near-total ban. But Abbott has said only that he wants to revisit exceptions to save the life of the pregnant person, and Democrats are deeply skeptical Republicans meant what they said during their campaigns.

More broadly, Abbott will have to navigate an especially tense dynamic among the “Big Three” — the governor, lieutenant governor and state House speaker. Patrick’s loathing of Speaker Dade Phelan has become well-documented, and Patrick is entering the next session more emboldened than ever. The election produced his most loyal GOP caucus yet, and he said Tuesday he is prepared to hit the ground running with the “most conservative Senate ever.”

2024?

As all these issues brew, questions remain about Abbott’s political future. Will he run for president in 2024? Is this his last term?

Abbott has not ruled out a White House bid. However, his chief political strategist, Dave Carney, downplayed the prospect on a post-election call with reporters, noting Abbott has a “huge session” coming up in January.

“We’ve never discussed it,” Carney said of Abbott running for president. “We just focus on our knitting in Texas.”

Like many prospective 2024 candidates, Abbott’s decision could be influenced by former President Donald Trump, who announced his long-anticipated comeback campaign Tuesday. Abbott has been silent on Trump’s announcement.

Abbott campaigned on Trump’s endorsement in his primary but kept him at a distance in the general election, skipping a Trump rally in Texas on the weekend before early voting.

In a post-election podcast interview, Carney said Abbott’s campaign is already analyzing data to better position him for a 2026 reelection campaign. But he said that is “if the governor decides to run again.”

If Abbott seeks — and wins — a fourth term, it would set him up to be the longest-serving governor ever. His predecessor, Rick Perry, holds that record with his 14-year tenure.

Brown, the Texas Democratic Party executive director, noted Abbott barely registers in early 2024 polls for president and said he should focus on doing a better job in his current position.

“I’m not going to make any decisions for the governor,” said Burrows, the GOP state representative. “I certainly think he’s been a phenomenal governor and could do many great things for not only Texas but other places as well.”

Disclosure: The Texas Public Policy Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/17/greg-abbott-third-term-priorities/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

"Karl Rove says Texas’ abortion law is too extreme" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove said Saturday that Texas’ abortion law is too extreme, underscoring an increasingly public discomfort with the measure among Republicans.

Rove made the comment during an exchange at a Texas Tribune Festival panel about elections following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. He said voters in Kansas had defeated an “extremist measure on abortion,” defining extreme as “essentially no abortion, no exceptions.”

“Do you think Texas is too extremist?” Tribune CEO Evan Smith asked.

“Yeah, I do,” Rove replied. “I think it’s gonna create a real problem for Republicans in the Legislature next year when they have to deal with it.”

Texas lawmakers passed a “trigger law” last year that automatically went into effect soon after the Roe decision and banned abortion without exceptions for rape or incest. Polls show very few voters support the lack of exceptions, and the law has complicated an election cycle that has been trending in Republicans’ favor on other issues.

Rove is not the only prominent Republican voice to express misgivings with Texas’ abortion ban. The speaker of the Texas House, Dade Phelan, said Friday at the Tribune Festival that his chamber might revisit the law, saying he has heard from members who are also concerned about the lack of exceptions for rape or incest. Also speaking Friday at the Festival, state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, said he would support a rape exception.

However, Rove noted that he supports the court’s ruling and that decisions on abortions should be left to elected officials.

The Texas Tribune Festival is here! Happening Sept. 22-24 in downtown Austin, this year’s TribFest features more than 25 virtual conversations with guests like Eric Adams, Pete Souza, Jason Kander and many others. After they air for ticket holders, anyone can watch these events at the Tribune’s Festival news page. Catch up on the latest news and free sessions from TribFest.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/24/robert-gibbs-karl-rove-texas-tribune-festival/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Mothers Against Greg Abbott has grown into a potent political force in the governor’s race, with a membership of over 50,000 on Facebook. The group recently caught more attention after releasing ads that have gone viral on social media.

Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language.

A little over a year ago, Nancy Thompson, an Austin mother of three kids, stood alone for two and half hours in front of the Texas Capitol with a sign that said “Mothers Against Greg Abbott.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/11/mothers-against-greg-abbott-texas/.

She was most upset about the governor’s ban on mask mandates, worried about her son who was medically vulnerable to COVID-19 after being hospitalized for another virus that had “infected all his organs,” she said.

“Honestly, I just didn’t give a shit anymore,” Thompson said. “I was just done. I was so done.”

Now, her protests are not so lonely. Her “Mothers Against Greg Abbott” effort has grown into a potent political force in the governor’s race, with a membership of over 50,000 on Facebook. The group has recently caught more attention after releasing professionally made ads that have gone viral on social media.

They have earned the backing of Abbott’s Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, who told the group Monday their work is “the talk of the town” no matter where he is.

“It’s absolutely transforming what’s possible in Texas right now, and there’s literally not a day that goes by that Amy or I or someone on our team do not get asked, ‘Have you seen that great Mothers Against Greg Abbott ad?’” O’Rourke said, addressing the group virtually along with his wife, Amy.

O’Rourke has long had an advantage with women in his uphill battle against Abbott, leading the governor by 6 percentage points among likely female voters in the latest public survey. But Thompson is working to rally a more specific group: mothers like herself, a onetime Republican who did not get deeply involved in politics until recent years. The group has naturally drawn many Democrats, but Thompson wants it to be as inclusive as possible, and its website calls it “a mix of Democrats, Moderate Republicans and Independents who are ready to work together for change for Texas.”

“We’re just trying to organize the army and make it super accessible to everyday Texans like me, who may not be super involved in politics — until you’re super involved in politics,” Thompson said.

Now Thompson is trying to take the group to the next level for the final three months of the race, organizing chapters throughout the state and endeavoring to put ads on TV. On Monday, it announced it had put up five billboards across the state criticizing Abbott over his response to the Uvalde school shooting.

Abbott’s campaign declined to comment on the group.

Campaign finance records show the group raised $170,000 through June 30, garnering over 2,400 mostly small donations. Thompson said the group has raised at least $200,000 more since then, as its ads blew up online in July. That is a notable amount for such an upstart group, though it still pales in comparison to the eight-figure campaign accounts that both Abbott and O’Rourke have to spread their messages.

While the group has been in existence since last year, it has garnered the most attention yet for the ads it has released this summer. One of them, titled “Whose Choice,” depicts a fictitious scence in which a doctor is counseling a woman about a pregnancy she may need to terminate due to a “catastrophic brain abnormality.” The doctor tells her there is “only one person who can make this choice” — before abruptly picking up a phone and calling Abbott. The ad has gotten over 7 million views on Twitter since it was posted July 25.

O’Rourke called the ads “amazingly effective” Monday.

Thompson is a mother of three from Austin whose professional career has mostly been in marketing. She said she considered herself a Republican — serving as a delegate to the 1988 national convention, for example — until President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. She began to vote Democratic going forward but did not get more actively involved in politics until more recently.

It was not until after Thompson made her initial protest sign last year that she realized it had carried the same acronym as former President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan: Make America Great Again. But she laughed it off to herself and stuck with it.

Someone took a picture of Thompson’s protest that day, and it started spreading on social media. Noticing how many people seemed to relate, Thompson created a private Facebook group a few days later using the same name, and by December, it had over 20,000 members.

Thompson noticed membership spiked around major news events involving Abbott, like when the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect in September. Another jump in membership came in February, when Abbott ordered state agencies to investigate gender-affirming care for transgender kids as child abuse.

“It just seemed like every single time Greg Abbott opened up his mouth, we gained thousands of followers every single time,” Thompson said. “He just spent the last year making enemies of so many Texans.”

The next year, as the group continued to swell and Thompson was looking for volunteers, she met the filmmaker Michelle Mower. Mower offered to help — and to connect Thompson with fellow filmmakers — and before long, they were all holding weekly meetings.

The group’s first ad, “Breaking Bread,” came out April 15, and it depicted three pairs of women who had been driven apart by politics agreeing to reconcile and hash out their differences. Everyone donated their time for the ad, which cost only $600, covering meals and equipment rentals, Thompson said. It would largely remain that way going forward.

Mothers Against Greg Abbott founder Nancy Thompson in front of the Governor’s Mansion on Aug. 4. Credit: Kylie Cooper/The Texas Tribune

Thompson continued to work with Mower and Chelsea Aldrich, an actress and writer. But she also realized she had a valuable resource next door — literally — in her neighbors, David Wolfson and Lauren Sheppard, co-founders of Spoon Films. The company had worked for a political action committee in 2018 that opposed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz when O’Rourke was challenging him — Fuck Ted Cruz PAC — and had leftover footage they were willing to share. Spoon Films ultimately produced ads for Mothers Against Greg Abbott featuring Cecile Richards, O’Rourke’s national finance chair and the daughter of former Gov. Ann Richards.

Along the way, Thompson also met fellow likeminded mothers like Cheryl Richard, a retired oil and gas executive from Austin. Richard said she first started talking to Thompson last year when Richard was thinking about challenging Abbott herself.

Richard ultimately provided $3,000 in seed funding to help make an ad called “Nothing Changes,” in which several mothers speak to the camera about overcoming political apathy in Texas. Richard also lent her horse, Ivan, who has a cameo in the ad.

Richard, 66, has twin sons and five grandchildren, with another on the way. Four of her grandchildren are girls. She said she identified as Republican her whole life until “around 2016,” when Trump was elected president and she realized how much the GOP had drifted away from her on some issues. She supports abortion rights and “reasonable” gun control, she said, like raising the age to buy an assault rifle to 21.

“I don’t feel like I left the Republican Party as much as it left me,” Richard said. “I’ve always been a moderate. I’m still a moderate. … And I think there are a lot of moderates out there, particularly women, who feel left behind and for the same reasons I felt left behind.”

Richard acknowledged that beating Abbott is “not just about putting out ads.” The “much tougher” mission, she said, is turning out more voters.

After all, the ads produced by the anti-Cruz PAC garnered plenty of clicks and media coverage, but O’Rourke still lost to Cruz by 3 percentage points.

Thompson appears aware of the challenge. She is working to expand the group’s advertising, filming more ads for the web, hoping to eventually air them on TV, and putting up the billboards, which spotlight Abbott’s statement after theUvalde shooting that it “could’ve been worse.” But she is also helping establish MAGA chapters across the state, including places as far-flung as Alpine in far West Texas and Palestine in East Texas.

The group has grown so much that she recently had to bring on two part-time employees, an accountant and a fundraiser.

While O’Rourke addressed the group for the first time Monday, Thompson has made sure to operate it independently of his campaign, mindful of campaign finance regulations. In fact, Thompson said, it was not until the last week of July that O’Rourke started following her on Twitter.

Disclosure: Facebook has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The full program is now LIVE for the 2022 The Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 22-24 in Austin. Explore the schedule of 100+ mind-expanding conversations coming to TribFest, including the inside track on the 2022 elections and the 2023 legislative session, the state of public and higher ed at this stage in the pandemic, why Texas suburbs are booming, why broadband access matters, the legacy of slavery, what really happened in Uvalde and so much more. See the program.

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June 24, 2022

"Republican Texas House candidate in Collin County charged with impersonating public servant" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A Texas House candidate and police officer backed by former President Donald Trump and top Texas Republicans has been indicted on a charge of impersonating a public servant, according to authorities.

Dallas police said Friday that Frederick Frazier was placed on administrative leave after the department was notified that a Collin County grand jury indicted him. Impersonating a public servant is a third-degree felony.

Frazier turned himself in to the Richardson jail Friday and posted bond, said Teddy Yoshida, a spokesperson for the Richardson Police Department.

It is unclear what the specific allegations against Frazier are, and a spokesperson for the Collin County district attorney’s office was not immediately available for comment.

Responding to the indictment, Frazier’s campaign blamed his Republican primary runoff opponent, Paul Chabot, who had suggested Frazier posed as a city code compliance officer to get Chabot’s campaign signs taken down at a Walmart. In a statement, Frazier’s campaign said Chabot, who has run for office multiple times before, is “trying to overturn the results of that election by bringing up trumped complaints to law enforcement and testifying before a grand jury.”

“Frederick Frazier is looking forward to having the opportunity to defend himself in court, where we are confident jurors will see through Chabot’s lies in the same way that voters have five times before,” the statement said.

John Thomas, Chabot’s consultant, issued a statement on Frazier’s indictment:

“An independent grand jury was empaneled and determined that Mr. Frazier committed multiple felonies. In fact, it was the Rangers and the McKinney PD who uncovered the felonies. Frazier’s lying and deceit knows no limits. He committed crimes and refuses to fess up. He is a disgrace to himself and to those who dawn a badge in law enforcement. Paul Chabot demands Frazier have one shred of decency and immediately drop out of the race as it’s crucial that both a Republican and candidate with integrity represent the people of the 61st district.”

Frazier easily won the Republican primary runoff last month for House District 61, an open seat in Collin County that leans Republican. A well-known advocate for law enforcement in Austin, Frazier had the backing of Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state House Speaker Dade Phelan. The Democratic nominee in the race is Sheena King.

During the runoff, Chabot spoke out about the alleged theft of dozens of his campaign signs. In one incident, Chabot said a Walmart store manager told him someone claiming to work for city code compliance came in and told the store to take down Chabot’s signs because they were illegally placed. Chabot said he reported that to the police.

The Texas Rangers ultimately looked into his claims. Chabot later obtained a report from the Rangers through a public records request that said the agency investigated Frazier in February for “alleged criminal violations … of Impersonating a Public Servant and potentially related Theft.”

At the time, Frazier’s campaign consultant, Craig Murphy, said his candidate denied any wrongdoing and called Chabot’s claims “frivolous.”

Texas Scorecard and Steven Monacelli, a freelance journalist who extensively covered the campaign sign controversy for Rolling Stone, were among the first to report Friday that Frazier had been indicted.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/24/texas-house-candidate-indicted/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

"West Texas rancher pours $2 million into Sarah Stogner’s underdog campaign for statewide oil and gas board seat" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A West Texas rancher who has battled the Railroad Commission over abandoned oil wells on her property has poured $2 million into a dark-horse challenger for a seat on the commission, Sarah Stogner, as she looks to pull off a major upset in the May 24 Republican primary runoff.

It is another striking twist in a race that Stogner, an oil and gas attorney, previously shook up in the primary when she released a campaign ad of herself riding a pumpjack nearly naked.

Ashley Watt, who owns a 75,000-acre ranch in the Permian Basin where Stogner currently lives, revealed to The Texas Tribune that she has provided the seven-figure funding to Stogner, saying it will be disclosed on a campaign finance report that is expected to be released Tuesday. The money is helping bankroll a substantial TV ad buy in the final two weeks before Stogner faces the commission’s chair, Wayne Christian, in the runoff.

[In Railroad Commission runoff, GOP candidates court North Texas voters — who want them to change agency’s confusing name]

“I am not a political person. I don't really care about politics,” Watt said in a statement. “But when an old Chevron oil well blew out radioactive brine water into my drinking water aquifer, ruining my ranch and forcing me to sell my entire cattle herd, the Railroad Commission teamed up with Chevron to work against me.

“I’m tired of fake conservatives like Wayne Christian trampling on Texans’ private property rights, while lining their pockets with poorly disguised bribes,” Watt added.

Stogner and Watt are friends. Stogner said they connected last year on Twitter and then Watt hired her as a lawyer. Stogner has been living on Watt’s ranch in Crane County after going through a marital separation.

Stogner said Watt approached her in recent weeks and said she had done some polling — unbeknownst to Stogner — that showed she had a shot in the runoff. It was a dilemma for Stogner, who had been self-funding her campaign and proudly swearing off donations. But she said Watt eventually convinced her to “get your ego out of the way” and accept the money to have a good chance to win.

“We’re gonna go hard and try to win it,” Stogner said, adding that she is “still self-funding” outside of Watt’s help and “still not taking money from the industry I’m going to regulate.”

Christian is up for a second term on the commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in Texas. He narrowly failed to win the primary outright in March, getting 47% of the vote to 15% for Stogner. A political unknown, she had captured wide attention in the weeks before the primary with her racy video — but she also campaigned on her oilfield experience and criticized Christian as too cozy with the industry.

Christian’s campaign did not return messages seeking comment on Stogner’s sudden TV spending, but he has stepped up his attacks on Stogner with the runoff looming, calling her a Democrat trying to fool GOP voters. He has pointed out she gave $25 to Democratic Beto O’Rourke in his 2018 race against Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and voted for the Democratic nominee in the last election for Railroad Commission. She has said she bought a T-shirt from O’Rourke’s campaign “as a joke” and also that she is “not a straight-ticket voter.”

In any case, Watt’s donation is significant. By comparison, the biggest checks that Gov. Greg Abbott — a fundraising powerhouse — tends to receive are $1 million each.

Stogner filed only one campaign finance report before the primary, and it showed $0 in contributions, spending and cash on hand through Dec. 31. Christian’s reports show he raised $445,000 from July last year through Feb. 19, days before the primary, and had $432,000 cash on hand at that point.

Watt’s money has allowed Stogner to blanket the state with TV ads pitching her candidacy, talking about her experience fighting “the liberal anti-oil politicians — and the woke corporations bankrolling them.” The 30-second spot concludes by billing her as a “tough conservative mama.”

Watt’s story has been well-documented. Her ranch has seen multiple abandoned wells, filled with cement long ago, start to spew dangerous chemicals, imperiling the groundwater beneath the ranch — and the cattle that rely on it. Chevron owns at least some of the wells, and it has worked to plug the leaks.

But Stogner has argued Chevron has not done enough to remedy the situation and the Railroad Commission, which is notoriously close to the industry, is not holding the company accountable by enforcing existing laws.

“Don’t let a California oil company permanently ruin the best part of Texas on your watch,” Watt told the commission in January. “Make them play by the same rules as anyone else and clean up their mess. Do your job.”

Christian thanked Watt at the time for testifying and said he has “concern about that.”

“If that is correct, there’s a problem that we as commissioners have a responsibility to the public and the law” to address, he said.

Watt said that is "pure lip service."

"He hasn't done a Goddamn thing," she said.

Watt has not been much of a political donor until this election cycle. She donated to two of Christian’s Republican primary challengers who did not advance, Thomas Slocum ($15,000) and Dwayne Tipton ($2,000). Records with the Texas Ethics Commission also show she gave $10,000 to Casey Gray, who unsuccessfully challenged state Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, in the March primary.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/16/texas-sarah-stogner-rancher-railroad-commission/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The March 1 primary features 11 contenders, but the battle between the GOP factions has centered on Morgan Luttrell and Christian Collins.

Luttrell is a former Navy SEAL backed by former Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Houston and the top super PAC aligned with House GOP leadership. Collins, meanwhile, is a young political operative who has the support of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the campaign arm of the House Freedom Caucus, and some of the most ardent pro-Trump Republicans in the House, like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was permanently banned from Twitter last month for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.

There are few notable policy differences between Luttrell and Collins — they both fervently want to secure the border, restrict abortion and protect gun rights. But at least one of them sees the race as having implications for the future of the GOP, pitching himself as more of a pro-Trump warrior who will battle leadership.

“[Luttrell] is lining up with the establishment in Washington, and I’m lining up with those who are the tip of the spear,” Collins said in an interview, calling himself the “true pro-Trump conservative” in the primary. However, he acknowledged it is a “very divided community right now.”

Indeed, the race is not as clear-cut. While House GOP leadership is pulling for Luttrell, he also has Trump loyalists in his corner, like U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson of Amarillo, and has the endorsement of the leader of the Texas House Freedom Caucus, state Rep. Mayes Middleton of Wallisville.

Luttrell has so far run a campaign less driven by contrast, trying to keep the focus on his background as a military hero who came home and did right by his community. But at a forum Wednesday night, Luttrell fired back at Collins’ criticism of his support that is linked to House GOP leadership.

“I got those PAC donations because I’m a better candidate, plain and simple,” Luttrell said, adding that he is “not the candidate who got … almost a million dollars by one person” — a reference to a pro-Collins super PAC donor. “I’m supported by all these people across the country, in this state and by those PACs because no one can hold a candle to my resume, my experience and my fortitude. Period.”

Collins has pledged to join the congressional Freedom Caucus if elected, while Luttrell has not made the same commitment, saying he first wants to get to Washington and survey the landscape. That has helped drive the wedge for Collins and his allies — including Cruz, who recently spent a day in the district campaigning with Collins and assuring voters he has the “guts” to stand up to House leadership.

Luttrell was unavailable for an interview for this story.

The race was triggered by Brady’s announcement in April that he would not seek reelection after a long tenure during which he ascended to the top of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. His 8th Congressional District, which spreads from the northern Houston suburbs into more rural territory, has been safely Republican and stayed that way through redistricting, meaning the primary will effectively decide his successor.

Brady — who carved a path as both friendly to Trump and loyal to House leadership in recent years — is staying out of the race.

Luttrell has been a candidate for months longer than Collins has, and he has emerged as a formidable fundraiser, raking in $1.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. But as the March 1 primary nears, Republicans are watching to see if the two will head to a runoff — where the intraparty feuding will likely only intensify.

Controversial allies

While trailing Luttrell in campaign fundraising, Collins has been boosted by a trio of super PACs that have spent over $800,000 on his behalf. At least two have them appear to have been overwhelmingly funded by Robert Marling, a Woodlands banker and friend of Cruz. The outside groups have heavily spent in support of Collins, though one of them, Texans for Freedom, has also disclosed anti-Luttrell expenditures.

That group has at least one billboard up in the district attacking Luttrell over his support from Crenshaw, who has emerged as something of a lightning rod in the race.

The rising-star Republican, who is also a fellow former Navy SEAL, has backed Luttrell since the first days of his campaign. But his involvement in the primary took on a new light in early December after he made national headlines for invoking the House Freedom Caucus while warning about “grifters” and “performance artists” inside the GOP — at an event alongside Luttrell, to boot. Crenshaw later denied he was singling out the Freedom Caucus with the comment, but it caused an intraparty furor and made Collins’ allyship with the Freedom Caucus more relevant.

Collins has done political work for Crenshaw previously, but he said he now shares the view of prominent Houston radio host Michael Berry, who recently said he no longer supports Crenshaw and is “embarrassed I helped him win.”

“Christian Collins used to work for me,” Crenshaw said in a statement. “He’s a nice kid but his professional career has only been on campaigns. His opinions change with the political winds. For instance he wrote a master’s thesis advocating for amnesty for illegal immigrants, and tried to have the paper withdrawn once he realized it was bad politics.”

That is a reference to Collins’ Liberty University thesis, which was published in 2013 and posited that Republicans could be more compassionate on immigration to win over Hispanic voters. It was written in the shadow of the 2012 presidential election, when the GOP grappled with whether its nominee, Mitt Romney, had been too hardlined on the issue. The university site where Collins’ paper was once available says it “has been withdrawn.”

Asked for comment on Crenshaw’s criticism, Collins pointed to an interview he gave Breitbart last month distancing himself from the paper, emphasizing it was written “almost 10 years ago” and saying he has since “spent my entire adult life fighting for conservative principles, most importantly border security.” He is now running on a hardline immigration platform, including opposition to a path to citizenship and support for decreasing overall immigration.

Collins and his allies are also targeting Luttrell’s loose affiliation with U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a leading anti-Trump Republican who is on a mission to purge his party of the former president’s influence. Luttrell’s campaign reported receiving a $5,000 donation — the maximum amount — from a Kinzinger political action committee in August.

At a January forum, Luttrell professed ignorance, saying he does not involve himself in his campaign’s fundraising and “didn’t know the check was cashed.” He said his campaign returned the check when they realized who it was from, while adding that he served in the military with Kinzinger and does not hold “any ill will” toward him.

“I don’t believe in anything Adam’s doing right now,” Lutrrell said. “I don’t back his politics at all. But I don’t hate that man. I’m a practicing Christian, and he and I served together.”

However, there are conflicting reports around how they got the donation in the first place. The Hill reported in December that Luttrell had asked Kinzinger for a donation, and a Kinzinger spokesperson, Maura Gillespie, confirmed to The Texas Tribune that the congressman made a contribution “because it was solicited.”

“I don’t know what Morgan knows or doesn’t know,” Collins said, “but the bottom line is Adam Kinzinger, to Republicans, is a traitor.”

Collins’ political ambition has long been apparent. He worked on Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, serving as an aide to Cruz’s father and campaign surrogate, Rafael Cruz. Collins went on to work as campaign manager and adviser to Brady. And in 2020, he started the Texas Youth Summit, an annual gathering for young conservatives in suburban Houston where Cruz, Crenshaw and other members of Congress have spoken.

Luttrell does not have nearly as much of a political resume. He retired from the Navy in 2014, and when Perry became Trump’s emergency secretary a few years later, Luttrell went to work for him as a special adviser. Luttrell got an executive certificate in professional leadership development from Harvard Business School, and he currently serves as an adjunct professor at Sam Houston State University, teaching law enforcement leadership, while running a small business.

Courting Trump

One major Republican voice has not weighed in on the primary yet: Trump. Both Collins and Luttrell are lobbying for his support.

Collins in particular is working to prove his pro-Trump bona fides, not only highlighting the donation by Kinzinger — whom Trump loathes — but also aligning himself with those who echo Trump’s conspiratorial obsession with the 2020 election results. On Wednesday, Collins got the support of Wendy Rogers, a far-right Arizona state senator who has led the charge to undermine Trump’s reelection loss there.

Trump raised speculation that he could get involved by staging a rally Saturday in Conroe, one of the biggest cities in the district, but he did not address the race there. Both Collins and Luttrell attended, and Perry showed up in a Luttrell campaign sweatshirt.

The race is personal for the former Texas governor. He is especially close to the Luttrell brothers and has a father-son-like relationship with Marcus Luttrell, who the Perrys took in after he showed up unannounced at their residence in 2007.

Luttrell also has a critical Trump ally on his side in Patrick, the lieutenant governor, who the former president has openly touted as the top broker for his Texas endorsements. Patrick, the presiding officer of the state Senate, endorsed Luttrell relatively early, acknowledging he does not normally issue endorsements outside Senate races “unless it’s something very special to me.”

For now, though, Trump’s plans for the primary remain a public mystery. In the lead-up to Saturday’s rally, a Trump spokesperson declined to say whether Trump would choose a candidate for the 8th Congressional District.

“Not a two-man race”

Nine other Republicans are on the ballot, and they have been vocal about their displeasure with the spotlight that has followed Collins and Luttrell.

“This is not a two-man race,” another candidate, Dan McKaughan, said at the January forum, suggesting that the “D.C. and Austin establishments … want to continue the status quo” with their preferred contenders in the primary.

Luttrell is not the only veteran running. McKaughan is a retired Navy lieutenant commander, while another candidate, Jonathan Hullihan, was a Navy judge advocate general. Hullihan has the backing of U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, a member of the Freedom Caucus.

But in addition to their endorsements, Collins and Luttrell have led the way in financial support — and especially Luttrell. He has raised almost $2 million since announcing in June, and his $1.2 million haul in the fourth quarter made him one of the top congressional fundraisers anywhere in Texas. Collins, who entered the race in early October, raised $334,000 through December.

Luttrell ended 2021 with a large cash-on-hand advantage — $1.6 million to $288,000 for Collins.

Disclosure: Sam Houston State University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/03/morgan-luttrell-christian-collins-kevin-brady-texas-congressional-dist/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Jan. 26, 2022

"Texas Republicans pressure court to reverse decision blocking attorney general from prosecuting election cases" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas' highest criminal court is facing intense pressure from fellow Republican elected officials to revisit a recent ruling that gutted the attorney general's ability to unilaterally prosecute election cases.

In recent days, the state's top GOP leaders — including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — have weighed in on the matter and sided with those imploring the Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider the decision. The all-GOP court issued an 8-1 opinion last month that struck down the attorney general's power to go after election cases without the permission of local prosecutors, saying it violates the separation-of-powers clause in the Texas Constitution.

Attorney General Ken Paxton has been vocal in his criticism of the decision and has filed a motion for rehearing. And in recent interviews with conservative media, he has called on supporters to pressure the court to reverse the ruling.

"Call them out by name," Paxton said in an interview on the show of Mike Lindell, the My Pillow CEO and prominent Donald Trump supporter. "I mean, you can look them up. There's eight of them that voted the wrong way. Call them, send mail, send email."

Comments like those from Paxton were cited in a Wednesday story by the Austin American-Statesman that raised ethical issues about the pressure campaign. The newspaper said such comments put "Paxton in an ethical gray area, if not in outright violation of the state's rules of conduct for lawyers."

The Court of Criminal Appeals has yet to address the GOP pleas for reconsideration — and it may never do so.

Randall Kelso, a professor at South Texas College of Law, said courts like the Court of Criminal Appeals tend to be reluctant to reverse to their decisions unless at least one of three conditions are met: There is a change in the facts at the core of the case, the ruling proves to be "unworkable in practice" or judges are persuaded that the decision was "substantially wrong." Kelso said he did not see how the first two conditions apply to the current situation, and as for proving that the ruling was "substantially wrong," he added, there is usually a "pretty high burden."

"Just because the various Texas lawmakers are petitioning, I wouldn't predict they'd just cave to them and say, 'We've gotta change our minds,'" Kelso said. "It'd be unusual to do it unless" any of those conditions are met.

The controversy comes at a time when Texas Republicans are doing all they can to show they are committed to securing elections, even as there continues to be no evidence of widespread malfeasance. And it comes after legislators passed a hard-fought bill last year to tighten voting rules in Texas that expands the attorney general's purview over elections.

Abbott's office pointed to that law Tuesday as it indicated support for reinstating the authority that the court stripped.

"Texas’ highest law enforcement officer has constitutional authority to enforce that election-integrity law," Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement. "The Court of Criminal Appeals needs to uphold Texas law and the Attorney General’s responsibility to defend it."

Earlier Tuesday, Patrick and 14 state senators filed an amicus brief supporting the push to convince the court to reconsider the ruling.

"If the court's decision stands, certain rogue county and district attorneys will be allowed to turn a blind eye to election fraud, and they will have the final say on whether election fraud is prosecuted at all," Patrick said in a statement. "To me, this is completely unacceptable."

Dozens of other Republican state lawmakers, candidates and activists have weighed in, telling the court to grant the motion for rehearing. They even include one of Paxton's challengers in the March primary, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Tyler.

At the same time, the little-known judges on the court are receiving a deluge of calls and emails. Houston conservative activist Steve Hotze has used his group, Conservative Republicans of Texas, to send out a robocall urging people to call the judges, telling them that if the ruling stands, "Democrats will steal the elections in November and turn Texas blue." The group sent out 228,000 calls statewide, according to a spokesperson for Hotze, Jared Woodfill.

The robocall was first reported by the Houston Chronicle.

The court's general counsel told the newspaper that one email was referred to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which is responsible for probing threats against state employees. The general counsel, Sian Schilhab, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The court is made up of a presiding judge and eight other judges who all serve six-year terms and appear on the ballot in staggered election years. Three of them are up for reelection in the March primary, and one of those three, Scott Walker, faces a challenger in Clint Morgan, a Harris County prosecutor. Morgan's endorsers include Hotze's Conservative Republicans of Texas.

Paxton is facing his own hotly contested primary, which includes Gohmert, Land Commissioner George P. Bush and former state Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman. During a recent campaign stop in Round Rock, Bush criticized Paxton over the ruling from the Court of Criminal Appeals, saying Texas needs an attorney general who can "confront county DAs that aren't doing their jobs."

"We've sadly seen Ken Paxton's last remaining authority in criminal law, which is voter fraud ... was stripped," Bush said, adding that the decision was "not by liberal activist judges" but by an all-Republican court. "[Paxton's office] has run amok because of the lack of accountability at the top of the chain of command."

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/26/texas-ken-paxton-court-election-prosecution/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Jan. 25, 2022

"Ken Paxton still hasn’t disclosed donors who fueled most of his $2.8 million campaign haul" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Attorney General Ken Paxton has not disclosed a large chunk of his campaign donors from the past six months, a week after he was required to report them to the Texas Ethics Commission.

Paxton, who is in a hotly contested Republican primary, had until Jan. 18 to submit his latest campaign finance report, which covers July 1 through Dec. 31, 2021. His campaign filed it a day late, citing technical issues, and left $2.1 million in donations unitemized out of the $2.8 million total that he raised. Campaigns are required to itemize — or provide donor names and other identifying information — for any donations they receive online or any that exceed $90.

Paxton’s campaign said on the report that it would file an amended report to fix the issue, but it had not done so as of Tuesday, according to the TEC website. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Paxton faces primary challenges from Land Commissioner George P. Bush, former state Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Tyler. All are saying he does not have the integrity to be the state’s top law enforcement official due to his own legal problems, which include a securities fraud indictment and an FBI investigation into claims he abused his office to aid a wealthy donor. He has denied wrongdoing in both cases.

“Ken Paxton has a track record of not following the rules and missing standard deadlines with the Texas Ethics Commission that every other candidate has adhered to,” Guzman’s consultant, Justin Dudley, said in a statement. “Paxton continues to prove to the citizens of Texas he is unfit to be Attorney General.”

It is not unheard of for a candidate to file a TEC report late by a number of days or make a mistake in reporting contributions that needs to be corrected by an amended report. But it is unusual for a candidate, a week after a deadline, to still not have disclosed information for such a large portion of their donors.

While not all of the $2.1 million in donations may have required itemization, it is likely that many did. The period included a fundraiser with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida where admission started at $1,000 per person.

Paxton’s $2.8 million haul was less than that of Guzman, who raised $3.7 million over the six-month period. Bush took in $1.9 million, while Gohmert, who did not enter the race until November, collected $1 million. Paxton still easily led the field in cash on hand, with a $7.5 million balance.

Paxton is not the only statewide candidate who ran into trouble with disclosing donors on the latest report. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke filed an amended report Monday, saying it was corrected to “report itemized contributions that were previously reported as unitemized.”

O’Rourke’s amended report followed two TEC complaints over it that were filed by the campaign of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. One of them alleged that O’Rourke had failed to itemize at least $322,528.34 in online donations.

In a statement on the first complaint, Abbott spokesperson Mark Miner said it was “one more example on a long list of credibility issues plaguing [O’Rourke’s] campaign.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/25/ken-paxton-texas-campaign-donations-2022/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.